Wyoming · Governor
election 2026-11-03 · forecast as of 2026-10-01 · fundamentals only, no polls
Who is running?
Kenneth Casner (Democratic), Eric Barlow (Republican).
The race, in brief
Wyoming elects a governor on November 3, 2026 in an open seat: Republican governor Mark Gordon is term limited. The text notes that Democrats have not won a statewide election in Wyoming since 2006. The state profile records a median age of 38.8 and a per capita income of 86477.
The Republican nominee is state senator Eric Barlow, who won the August 18 primary with 45.1% over state superintendent Megan Degenfelder at 29.7% and Brent Bien at 23.6%. The Democratic nominee is Kenneth Casner, a candidate for governor in 2002 and 2018, who was unopposed. Rebecca Bextel is running for the Constitution Party.
All seven raters listed call the race R, from the Cook Political Report (September 11, 2025) to Decision Desk HQ (September 23, 2026). The text has no general-election polls; its only poll is a Republican primary poll by Pulse Decision Science (July 18–20, 2026) showing Barlow at 42%.
The facts carry no model forecast rows for this race.
The facts, each beside its sentence
Republican incumbent Mark Gordon is term limited and ineligible to seek a third consecutive term.
Republican state senator Eric Barlow and Democratic perennial candidate Kenneth Casner are the nominees for their respective parties.
Republican state senator Eric Barlow and Democratic perennial candidate Kenneth Casner are the nominees for their respective parties.
* Kenneth Casner, candidate for governor in 2002 and 2018
*Eric Barlow, state senator from the 23rd district (2023–present)
Democrats have not won a statewide election in Wyoming since 2006.
Barlow defeated state superintendent Megan Degenfelder in the Republican primary with 45.1% of the vote. Casner secured the Democratic nomination unopposed.
Sabato's Crystal Ball R August 12, 2026 Silver Bulletin R August 25, 2026
Pulse Decision Science (R) Jul 18–20, 2026 400 (LV)
(running for U.S. senate; endorsed Degenfelder)
* Rebecca Bextel, business owner
Not in the source: No model forecast rows in the facts.; No general-election polls in the text.; No fundraising figures in the text.; No previous gubernatorial or presidential vote shares are given.
Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 88af34591f70; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.
How it has voted for president
| Two-party margin | 2016 | 2020 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| President | R+51.4 | R+45.0 | R+47.0 |
A shift of 4.5 points toward the Democrats from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.
The state in numbers
| Measure | State | Average state | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's degree or higher, 25+, 2023 | 29.9% | 34.0% | -4.1 pts |
| White, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 82.1% | 66.3% | +15.9 pts |
| Black, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 0.8% | 10.1% | -9.3 pts |
| Hispanic or Latino, 2023 | 10.4% | 12.9% | -2.4 pts |
| Asian, non-Hispanic, 2023 | 0.8% | 4.4% | -3.6 pts |
| Foreign-born, 2023 | 3.5% | 9.6% | -6.1 pts |
| Median age, 2023 | 38.8 | 39.1 | -0.28 |
| Median household income, 2023 | $74,815 | $77,633 | $-2,818 |
| Median home value, 2023 | $285,100 | $314,132 | $-29,032 |
| Owner-occupied homes, 2023 | 71.9% | 67.4% | +4.6 pts |
| Unemployment (ACS), 2023 | 3.7% | 4.8% | -1.1 pts |
| Federal government workers, 2023 | 3.6% | 3.0% | +0.5 pts |
| Work from home, 2023 | 8.5% | 12.3% | -3.7 pts |
| Households on SNAP, 2023 | 5.0% | 11.1% | -6.1 pts |
| Households with Social Security income, 2023 | 32.7% | 32.1% | +0.6 pts |
| Households with public assistance income, 2023 | 1.6% | 2.6% | -1.0 pts |
| Moved in from another state, past year, 2023 | 4.8% | 2.9% | +2.0 pts |
| Gini index, 2023 | 0.45 | 0.47 | -0.02 |
| Unemployment, latest month (BLS), 2026-07 | 2.5% | 4.0% | -1.4 pts |
| Change in unemployment, past 12 months, 2026-07 | -0.3 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.2 pts |
| Change since the last election (24 months), 2026-07 | -0.4 pts | -0.1 pts | -0.3 pts |
| Per-capita personal income (BEA), 2024 | $86,477 | $70,662 | $+15,815 |
| Per-capita income growth since 2019, nominal, 2024 | 39.8% | 32.4% | +7.4 pts |
| Government and other transfers, share of income, 2024 | 14.8% | 19.4% | -4.6 pts |
| Social Security, share of income, 2022 | 5.2% | 6.1% | -0.9 pts |
| Medicare, share of income, 2022 | 3.3% | 4.4% | -1.1 pts |
| Medicaid, share of income, 2022 | 1.6% | 3.8% | -2.2 pts |
| SNAP, share of income, 2022 | 0.1% | 0.6% | -0.4 pts |
| Earned Income Tax Credit, share of income, 2022 | 0.2% | 0.3% | -0.1 pts |
| Veterans' benefits, share of income, 2022 | 1.0% | 0.9% | +0.1 pts |
| Federal civilian jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.7% | 1.5% | +0.2 pts |
| Military jobs, share of all jobs, 2022 | 1.4% | 1.2% | +0.3 pts |
ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.
Has anyone polled it?
We hold no published poll of this general election. A search of aggregators, pollster releases, university polls and local news on 2 October found none (primary polls exist for some races and are not this contest). That is what we could find, not proof that no poll has been conducted. When one is published it enters the poll model and this page gains a nowcast.
Who is ahead, and by how much?
Margins and probabilities are for Kenneth Casner. With no polls, this is the fundamentals forecast alone: the state's own past results for this office and for president, its demographics, economy, religion and government employment, the candidates' incumbency, experience and money, and the national environment for this midterm.
How wide is the range?
In 8 of 10 simulations the margin falls between -56 and -21 points. The spread is the fundamentals model's own measured error (sd 13.4 points), not a guess: a forecast without polls is uncertain and is shown that way.
How accurate is a fundamentals-only forecast?
Tested on past races without letting it see them: across 175 Senate and governor races in 2016-2022 it missed the final margin by 8.3 points on average, and by 6.7 points across 35 races in 2024. Our poll-based forecast missed by 5.4 on the same races. Most races it is used for here are lopsided enough that an 8-point miss would not change the winner.
Where did every number come from?
Run 691700b8, single_race_latent/0.8.1, as of 2026-10-01 23:02 UTC, basis: ground-up prior only, no polls.